I was surprised today to find two mails from EA Bioware in my inbox, one asking me to fill out a survey about my beta-testing experience, and the other suggesting that after having beta-tested SWTOR I might want to pre-order it. Only problem is that they got it the wrong way round: I am not in the beta, but I already pre-ordered. I fired off an inquiry to support, and as it turns out they sent those mails to lots of people by mistake. So despite evidence to the contrary, I'm still not in the beta.

But hey, it wasn't a total loss. I did receive an automated response from EA Bioware customer service that made me smile. And when was the last time an automated e-mail made you smile? It went like this:

Greetings Humanoid,

I am the automatic Protocol Response Droid A1-A1, Human-Cyborg relations.You have successfully submitted a ticket to the Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ galactic customer support team.A Protocol Droid will contact you in-game or via email within the next 24 hours.We appreciate your patience and enthusiasm and are looking forward to seeing you in Star Wars™: The Old Republic™!Galactic support is our speciality…

Interestingly enough the people on the list were wondering what the heck was going on... we didn't get it AND I don't think such an email would be sent to us. I know they are not getting uniform feedback across all mechanics/content still...

I hate to think badly of bioware here but... was this really a "mistake"? They appear to be in uber buzz mode right now. And they have as much as said they can't break the testing budget by letting more testers in for performance testing. Was this an attempt to let the 2nd place betas know what SWTOR was still going live? Ham handed marketing?

"Wellington Thomas has added you as a contact on Glitch. This will probably be because they want to be able to contact you when they're playing the game.

Don't worry, it's not weird. You're not contracted to be pals for life. It doesn't mean you have to marry them, or even spend 7 minutes in a locked storage cabinet with them (though of course you can if you want. Who am I to tell you what to do? I'm not the boss of you. Do whatever you like).It's just nice to have people to play with sometimes.